I went to the ER last week thinking I was having a miscarriage and was told that this is what was causing the bleeding. I’ve been spotting for over a week now, but no major bleeding. It ranges from brown to pink to red with clots, and what looks like maybe tissue. As of Friday the hospital still hadn’t sent my records to my doctor, so I don’t know any specifics. They just told me to stay on bedrest until I haven’t bled for 72 hours. As of right now it looks like I’ll be in this bed a while. I’m calling back tomorrow and asking to be seen. I’m really scared there isn’t going to be a heartbeat.
Everything I read about these just makes me feel worse, but I know there are a lot of good outcomes too.
They are actually decently common, and unfortunately there’s no intervention. In over 90% of cases where a viable fetus has already been determined (i.e. you’ve already been to the obstetrician and had a viable pregnancy confirmed), a healthy baby is eventually delivered. In slightly less than 10% of cases, the pregnancy is lost. [name]How[/name] far along are you?
[name]Do[/name] you understand what it is? Basically bleeding originating from anywhere in the placenta, pooling between the placenta and your uterus, or the placenta and the baby’s amniotic sac. It happens when a bit of placenta inadvertently separates from the bit of uterus in which it’s implanted. The effects, as you can imagine, can range from harmless (small bit of placenta which carries blood to fetus mixed with blood from other bits of placenta, so it won’t matter if the contribution from the detached part is lost) to fatal, if enough detaches. If no further placental bits detach, then the blood clots and the pregnancy progresses onwards.
Unfortunately obstetrics has yet to develop a way to force placentas to re-attach, or even to ‘glue’ placenta in place if an abruption is threatened. But, as I mentioned above, in over 90% of cases the baby is not threatened and the pregnancy progresses on with no further complications.
I’ll be 10 weeks tomorrow and the baby was wiggling and had a heart rate of 171 at the ER [name]Wednesday[/name]. Thanks for the explanation. I had a pretty good idea about it, but your description helps.